Jeremiah Thompson took the prime initiative in developing the Black Ball line sailing packets and bringing Southern cotton up the cost to New York.
The Black Ball line was the first line to regulate the schedule of sailing packets.
Black Ball line is a service line between New York and Liverpool.
Allowed merchants and traders to plan and ship reliable schedule.
Outline for the Secondary Source
1.Built and run mainly by Americans, the packet lines introduced new concepts and comfort levels for ocean voyages
-They dominated the transatlantic traffic
-They made most voyages and money for their owners.
2.Jeremiah Thompson was the main founder of the packet line.
-He came to New York to represent his family’s business.
-5 men were involved, the quakers.
3.Thompson had an idea to improved ocean travel.
-He wanted faster service since people had to wait long for them.
-He formed a transatlantic line and it established ports and locked into an unchanging departure schedule for the foreseeable future.
4.Thompson and his group member made an announcement about their line is the newspaper.
-They announced, "In order to furnish frequent and regular conveyances for goods and passengers, the subscribers have undertaken to establish a line of vessels between New York and Liverpool, to sail from each place on a certain day in every month throughout the yea
- The ships were built in NY and were fast sailors.
-This line promise speed, comfort, and predictability-qualities previously unknown on the North Atlantic.
5.They name the line Black Ball.
-Black Ball was used as identification for their line; the sign was painted and hanged from the highest point of the mast.
-They added more ships to their line.
- The Black Ball unloaded and reloaded in only six days.
- Black Ball ships were running with the speed and almost the regularity of a horse-drawn mail coach.
6. Black Ball began to have competition because it was very successful.
- The Atlantic packet line started to compete by running from Philadelphia and Boston.
-The Boston line competed by increasing its speed. It sailed all the way home from Liverpool in only 17 days.
-Other lines began to run in London and to Le Havre on the northern coast of France.
-Packet competition kicked ship design into the progressive nineteenth century.
7. Black Ball tried to make their line better to overcome its competitors.
- Dining cabin offered polished mahogany tables and pillars, sofas, and plush crimson draperies.
-The men's cabins, brightened by skylights of ground glass in the main deck overhead, had olive-colored damask silk curtains. In the ladies' cabins the curtains were fine blue silk. The ladies' lounge even featured a small piano flanked by large mirrors.
8. East River tried to find a way to increase speed without losing cargo space.
- The rounded bow and plump midship lines of the first packets gave way to faster ships with longer, thinner hulls and sharper bows and sterns.
- V- shaped hull were required because they believed it would increase speed. (These design tendencies all meant less payload and lower profits for a ship of a given length.)
9. A solution for the growth of speed was founded.
- Erward Knight discovered it when he started running coastal packets to New Orleans.
- The New Orleans packets were built with flat bottoms which increased speed, so that was the solution.
10. Collin’s line increased competition.
-His line became famous for its flat bottoms.
- His Shakespeare ran 142 feet and 747 tons; his Garrick, Sheridan, and Siddons, 158 feet and 895 tons each; and the Roscius, at 168 feet, were the first New York packet to exceed 1,000 tons.
-He moved his passengers cabin where the cabins got more air and light-but without making the ship top-heavy or harming her behavior or safety.
- The cabin was 3 xs larger than those in the first Black Ball.
- The line was elegance with its food’s line, wines, and decor.
- Ships were fast.
-The line had cut those averages to twenty days, twelve hours and thirty days, twelve hours. Ocean travel had never before made such vaulting strides in only two decades.
11. Ocean Voyages had to work around 3 endemic aspects seasickness, danger and boredom.
- Sickness began after a few days but could last longer, especially for women and in heavy seas.
-A sailing vessel-remained at the mercy of mighty natural forces, and on the heavily traveled North Atlantic might also collides with another ship or with an iceberg.
- Every day passengers had to find ways to kill time, a search that became more desperate and exhausted toward the end of the passage.
12. The captain has the important role in the voyage.
- He had skill, judgment, and tenacity.
-He had to make decisions on the ships heading and position.
-He was supposed to charm the passengers and, on occasion, bully the crew.
- To the extent that a packet voyage responded to mere human will and intention, it came down to a captain and his ship getting along well.
13. There was increased in money to secure a particular captain.
- People paid a $140 one way-fare.
- An especially popular commander-such as George Maxwell of the Black Ball, Nash DeCost of the Blue Swallowtail, or Nathaniel Palmer of the Dramatic-reliably attracted extra business.
-The governments in Washington and London also paid him two cents for each American letter and two pence (four cents) for each British letter he carried.
14. The crew was sailors from many places.
-The cooks were mainly black people.
- Passengers had most of their shipboard contact with the stewards, who served food, cleaned and fetched, and answered redundant questions about the weather and general course of the trip.
-Captains drove the packets hard, always to the limit that sails and masts could bear, straining for speed.
15. People had to be aware of the weather in the northern Atlantic oceans.
-"All our prosperity, enterprize, temper come and go with the fickle air. If the wind should forget to blow we must eat our masts."
-too much wind brought its own delights.
16. The sea winds made the ocean rough.
-The wind continued as the sea got rougher.
17. Most passengers in cabin were male.
-British textile merchants and army officers, and American businessmen.
-It was a quite masculine atmosphere.
-They would targets in the rigging, sang songs, made bets, played cards and games, held mock courts, told jokes and stories; they drank all day long.
17. There was a variety of food in the packet life which was very pleasant.
-A housed-over longboat on deck held a three-tiered menagerie: sheep and pigs on the bottom, then ducks and geese, and hens and chickens on the top.
-These animals provided fresh meat, eggs, milk, and cream for the laden plates in the dining saloon.
-Dinner ran to three comparable courses, good pastries, seven kinds of alcohol, and dried fruits for dessert.
18. Packets carried few steerage passengers until after 1840.
-The tightly packed steerage became a fetid horror at night and in bad weather.
-People liked to be up on deck because they could breathe fresh air and take walks, play shuffleboard, and watch the sea and the other passengers.
19. At night passengers would see the sky full with stars, they enjoyed nature.
-In every direction, the sky arched all the way down to the horizon and they would see shooting stars.
-The sails and rigging glowed. It was all so wild and beautiful.
20. Passengers found it difficult to sleep.
-People stayed up late because sleeping was so difficult.
-The sleeping quarters were small, unheated, dimly lit, and poorly ventilated.
-Waves caused variety of noises that didn’t allowed passengers to sleep.
-Animal also made noises by running.
-Also wind made a whistled noise.
21. Harriet Martineau made a book about the most forgiving account of a packet voyage.
-In August 1834 she completed short stories that showed beauties of classical economics.
-She booked passage for New York on the Red Star Line's United States.
22. Harriet Martineau cataloged the twenty-three cabin passengers on board.
-a Prussian physician, a New England preacher, a Boston merchant, a high-spirited young South Carolinian returning from study in Germany, a newly married couple who kept to themselves, a Scottish army officer whose many crotchets amused the young people, an elderly widow, a Scottish lady of age, and a young man from Yorkshire. And the rest were English and American merchants.
23. Passengers wanted to come back home.
-Americans became anxious.
-Passengers became sea sick.
-The wind was too strong for a large, flaring bonnet, but she tried a warm black silk cap, snugly fitted.
24. Martineau had qualities that maintained her spirits on the ocean.
-A bottomless curiosity and delight in new experiences.
-An absolute refusal to be discouraged by anything whatever.
- She would write about her thought and be alone.
25. The captain raced the Black X line.
-Martineau informed the captain that the Black X line was right in front of them so he started to speed up.
-In three days the United States overtook the Montreal and left her far behind, slowly falling below the eastern horizon.
26. There were a few discomforts at sea.
-rainy days that kept everyone below in stifling air, and prolonged calms that made tempers short, provoking rude behavior at dinner and accusations of cheating at shuffleboard.
-Seasickness
-Storms lasted all nights.
-The fruit would dry up.
-People were running out of supplies.
-Lack of room
-Freshwater was limited.
-The chairs and bed were too hard.
-People were getting sunburn.
27. People started to be happier, their spirit rose up.
-The ship was close to getting to America so people would change into their best clothes.
-The United States reached New York after forty-two days.
28. By 1930s many ships were sailing and caused some disturbances.
-Twenty packet ships were running from New York to Liverpool, twelve more to London, and sixteen to Le Havre.
-Every month, a dozen packets left New York for Europe and a dozen more arrived.
-Packets suffered occasional collisions. Only two accidents caused any loss of life The Albion of the Black Ball Line sank off Ireland in 1822, killing forty-six people, and four years later the Crisis of the Black X Line disappeared on a westbound run with her crew and about a dozen passengers. Those two disasters aside, the packets had compiled-for the time-a remarkable record of fast, safe, predictable transatlantic travel.
29. Safety records improved the sailing of ships.
- Americans ships were better built.
-American commanders and officers were more educated and competent and American seamen more carefully selected, more efficient, and better paid-to the point that the best British sailors were defecting to American ships.
30. Packets became more successful and made technical improvements in transatlantic oceans.
-Passengers came to expect bigger, faster ships every few years.
-However, since the temperature was unpredictable schedules would vary.
-American became more advance on turning out ships that were successful.
Black Ball Notes
Outline for the Secondary Source
1. Built and run mainly by Americans, the packet lines introduced new concepts and comfort levels for ocean voyages
-They dominated the transatlantic traffic
-They made most voyages and money for their owners.
2. Jeremiah Thompson was the main founder of the packet line.
- He came to New York to represent his family’s business.
- 5 men were involved, the quakers.
3. Thompson had an idea to improved ocean travel.
- He wanted faster service since people had to wait long for them.
- He formed a transatlantic line and it established ports and locked into an unchanging departure schedule for the foreseeable future.
4. Thompson and his group member made an announcement about their line is the newspaper.
-They announced, "In order to furnish frequent and regular conveyances for goods and passengers, the subscribers have undertaken to establish a line of vessels between New York and Liverpool, to sail from each place on a certain day in every month throughout the yea
- The ships were built in NY and were fast sailors.
-This line promise speed, comfort, and predictability-qualities previously unknown on the North Atlantic.
5. They name the line Black Ball.
-Black Ball was used as identification for their line; the sign was painted and hanged from the highest point of the mast.
-They added more ships to their line.
- The Black Ball unloaded and reloaded in only six days.
- Black Ball ships were running with the speed and almost the regularity of a horse-drawn mail coach.
6. Black Ball began to have competition because it was very successful.
- The Atlantic packet line started to compete by running from Philadelphia and Boston.
-The Boston line competed by increasing its speed. It sailed all the way home from Liverpool in only 17 days.
-Other lines began to run in London and to Le Havre on the northern coast of France.
-Packet competition kicked ship design into the progressive nineteenth century.
7. Black Ball tried to make their line better to overcome its competitors.
- Dining cabin offered polished mahogany tables and pillars, sofas, and plush crimson draperies.
-The men's cabins, brightened by skylights of ground glass in the main deck overhead, had olive-colored damask silk curtains. In the ladies' cabins the curtains were fine blue silk. The ladies' lounge even featured a small piano flanked by large mirrors.
8. East River tried to find a way to increase speed without losing cargo space.
- The rounded bow and plump midship lines of the first packets gave way to faster ships with longer, thinner hulls and sharper bows and sterns.
- V- shaped hull were required because they believed it would increase speed. (These design tendencies all meant less payload and lower profits for a ship of a given length.)
9. A solution for the growth of speed was founded.
- Erward Knight discovered it when he started running coastal packets to New Orleans.
- The New Orleans packets were built with flat bottoms which increased speed, so that was the solution.
10. Collin’s line increased competition.
-His line became famous for its flat bottoms.
- His Shakespeare ran 142 feet and 747 tons; his Garrick, Sheridan, and Siddons, 158 feet and 895 tons each; and the Roscius, at 168 feet, were the first New York packet to exceed 1,000 tons.
-He moved his passengers cabin where the cabins got more air and light-but without making the ship top-heavy or harming her behavior or safety.
- The cabin was 3 xs larger than those in the first Black Ball.
- The line was elegance with its food’s line, wines, and decor.
- Ships were fast.
-The line had cut those averages to twenty days, twelve hours and thirty days, twelve hours. Ocean travel had never before made such vaulting strides in only two decades.
11. Ocean Voyages had to work around 3 endemic aspects seasickness, danger and boredom.
- Sickness began after a few days but could last longer, especially for women and in heavy seas.
-A sailing vessel-remained at the mercy of mighty natural forces, and on the heavily traveled North Atlantic might also collides with another ship or with an iceberg.
- Every day passengers had to find ways to kill time, a search that became more desperate and exhausted toward the end of the passage.
12. The captain has the important role in the voyage.
- He had skill, judgment, and tenacity.
-He had to make decisions on the ships heading and position.
-He was supposed to charm the passengers and, on occasion, bully the crew.
- To the extent that a packet voyage responded to mere human will and intention, it came down to a captain and his ship getting along well.
13. There was increased in money to secure a particular captain.
- People paid a $140 one way-fare.
- An especially popular commander-such as George Maxwell of the Black Ball, Nash DeCost of the Blue Swallowtail, or Nathaniel Palmer of the Dramatic-reliably attracted extra business.
-The governments in Washington and London also paid him two cents for each American letter and two pence (four cents) for each British letter he carried.
14. The crew was sailors from many places.
-The cooks were mainly black people.
- Passengers had most of their shipboard contact with the stewards, who served food, cleaned and fetched, and answered redundant questions about the weather and general course of the trip.
-Captains drove the packets hard, always to the limit that sails and masts could bear, straining for speed.
15. People had to be aware of the weather in the northern Atlantic oceans.
-"All our prosperity, enterprize, temper come and go with the fickle air. If the wind should forget to blow we must eat our masts."
-too much wind brought its own delights.
16. The sea winds made the ocean rough.
-The wind continued as the sea got rougher.
17. Most passengers in cabin were male.
-British textile merchants and army officers, and American businessmen.
-It was a quite masculine atmosphere.
-They would targets in the rigging, sang songs, made bets, played cards and games, held mock courts, told jokes and stories; they drank all day long.
17. There was a variety of food in the packet life which was very pleasant.
-A housed-over longboat on deck held a three-tiered menagerie: sheep and pigs on the bottom, then ducks and geese, and hens and chickens on the top.
-These animals provided fresh meat, eggs, milk, and cream for the laden plates in the dining saloon.
-Dinner ran to three comparable courses, good pastries, seven kinds of alcohol, and dried fruits for dessert.
18. Packets carried few steerage passengers until after 1840.
-The tightly packed steerage became a fetid horror at night and in bad weather.
-People liked to be up on deck because they could breathe fresh air and take walks, play shuffleboard, and watch the sea and the other passengers.
19. At night passengers would see the sky full with stars, they enjoyed nature.
-In every direction, the sky arched all the way down to the horizon and they would see shooting stars.
-The sails and rigging glowed. It was all so wild and beautiful.
20. Passengers found it difficult to sleep.
-People stayed up late because sleeping was so difficult.
-The sleeping quarters were small, unheated, dimly lit, and poorly ventilated.
-Waves caused variety of noises that didn’t allowed passengers to sleep.
-Animal also made noises by running.
-Also wind made a whistled noise.
21. Harriet Martineau made a book about the most forgiving account of a packet voyage.
-In August 1834 she completed short stories that showed beauties of classical economics.
-She booked passage for New York on the Red Star Line's United States.
22. Harriet Martineau cataloged the twenty-three cabin passengers on board.
-a Prussian physician, a New England preacher, a Boston merchant, a high-spirited young South Carolinian returning from study in Germany, a newly married couple who kept to themselves, a Scottish army officer whose many crotchets amused the young people, an elderly widow, a Scottish lady of age, and a young man from Yorkshire. And the rest were English and American merchants.
23. Passengers wanted to come back home.
-Americans became anxious.
-Passengers became sea sick.
-The wind was too strong for a large, flaring bonnet, but she tried a warm black silk cap, snugly fitted.
24. Martineau had qualities that maintained her spirits on the ocean.
-A bottomless curiosity and delight in new experiences.
-An absolute refusal to be discouraged by anything whatever.
- She would write about her thought and be alone.
25. The captain raced the Black X line.
-Martineau informed the captain that the Black X line was right in front of them so he started to speed up.
-In three days the United States overtook the Montreal and left her far behind, slowly falling below the eastern horizon.
26. There were a few discomforts at sea.
-rainy days that kept everyone below in stifling air, and prolonged calms that made tempers short, provoking rude behavior at dinner and accusations of cheating at shuffleboard.
-Seasickness
-Storms lasted all nights.
-The fruit would dry up.
-People were running out of supplies.
-Lack of room
-Freshwater was limited.
-The chairs and bed were too hard.
-People were getting sunburn.
27. People started to be happier, their spirit rose up.
-The ship was close to getting to America so people would change into their best clothes.
-The United States reached New York after forty-two days.
28. By 1930s many ships were sailing and caused some disturbances.
-Twenty packet ships were running from New York to Liverpool, twelve more to London, and sixteen to Le Havre.
-Every month, a dozen packets left New York for Europe and a dozen more arrived.
-Packets suffered occasional collisions. Only two accidents caused any loss of life The Albion of the Black Ball Line sank off Ireland in 1822, killing forty-six people, and four years later the Crisis of the Black X Line disappeared on a westbound run with her crew and about a dozen passengers. Those two disasters aside, the packets had compiled-for the time-a remarkable record of fast, safe, predictable transatlantic travel.
29. Safety records improved the sailing of ships.
- Americans ships were better built.
-American commanders and officers were more educated and competent and American seamen more carefully selected, more efficient, and better paid-to the point that the best British sailors were defecting to American ships.
30. Packets became more successful and made technical improvements in transatlantic oceans.
-Passengers came to expect bigger, faster ships every few years.
-However, since the temperature was unpredictable schedules would vary.
-American became more advance on turning out ships that were successful.